Recognizing the Difference: Healthy vs. Unhealthy Relationships

There are moments when we are asked, more directly, to look at the relationships in our lives. To consider not just who we are connected to, but how those connections feel over time. Whether they offer steadiness, or whether they ask us to override ourselves in order to stay.

Many people have felt a strong pull toward someone and only later realized that something didn’t quite align. There may not have been a clear moment where things went wrong. No obvious turning point. Instead, it can feel like a gradual awareness, where the relationship required more explanation, more adjustment, or more effort than expected. This is often less about poor judgment and more about how quickly attachment can form before clarity has had the chance to develop.

Research shared through Utah State University Extension, grounded in the work of John Van Epp, offers a helpful way to understand how relationships form over time. The R.A.M. Model, or Relationship Attachment Model, outlines a progression of connection that moves from knowing someone, to building trust, to developing mutual reliance and commitment, with intimacy deepening alongside that foundation. It offers a useful reminder that healthy relationships are not built only on intensity or chemistry, but on pacing, consistency, and what is actually revealed over time.

In unhealthy dynamics, that pacing often shifts. Commitment can come before truly knowing someone. Trust is extended quickly, sometimes in response to intensity rather than consistency. Emotional or physical closeness deepens before there is enough information to understand whether the relationship is steady, reciprocal, or safe. What feels like connection can, over time, reveal itself as attachment that formed faster than understanding.

These relationships are not always easy to identify at the beginning. They can feel engaging, meaningful, even promising. At the same time, there is often a quieter layer underneath. A sense of needing to explain things away. Moments where something feels slightly off but gets dismissed. A growing awareness that you are working to maintain the connection rather than being supported within it. These patterns tend to build gradually, which is why they are easy to normalize in real time and easier to recognize later.

Healthy relationships tend to feel different in ways that are sometimes less dramatic but more sustainable and stable. There is space to observe and understand each other without pressure to accelerate. Care shows up consistently, not just in moments of intensity. When something goes wrong, there is clear accountability rather than avoidance, minimization, or dismissal. You are able to stay connected to yourself while also being connected to the other person. The relationship does not require you to shrink, overextend, or second-guess your internal experience to keep it intact.

For many people, this shift is not just about learning new skills. It is also about unlearning old patterns. Sometimes intensity has been mistaken for closeness. Sometimes over-functioning has been mistaken for love. Sometimes ignoring discomfort has felt safer than naming it. These are not personal failures. They are patterns shaped by experience, and they can change with awareness and time.

A helpful place to start is not with intensity, but with observations:

• What do you actually know about this person across time? 

• Do their actions align with their words consistently? 

• Do you feel more like yourself in the connection, or less? 

• Is trust being built through experience, or assumed in hope? 

These questions slow the process down just enough to allow for your clarity to emerge.

The goal is not simply to feel something passionate. It is to build something that remains consistent, reciprocal, and real.

The goal is identifying if the relationship is steady enough that it does not require you to leave yourself to stay.

By Ashley Bell, MMFT, LMFT

*Responsibly created with the help of ChatGPT